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the complete review - autobiographical
A Prague Flâneur
by
Vítězslav Nezval
general information | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | A Prague Flâneur |
| Author: | Vítězslav Nezval |
| Genre: | Autobiography |
| Written: | 1938 (Eng. 2024) |
| Length: | 200 pages |
| Original in: | Czech |
| Availability: | A Prague Flâneur - US |
| A Prague Flâneur - UK | |
| A Prague Flâneur - Canada | |
| Der Prager Spaziergänger - Deutschland | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) | |
| directly from: Twisted Spoon Press |
- Czech title: Pražský chodec
- Translated by Jed Slast
- With several photographs
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Our Assessment:
B : nice account of place and time, with interesting digressions
See our review for fuller assessment.
The complete review's Review:
A Prague Flâneur opens with Vítězslav Nezval having handed in the manuscript for his The Absolute Gravedigger -- on 9 June 1937, as he precisely dates it -- and beginning his account of some of his Prague wanderings over the next year.
(He will then also note, near the end: "Today, June 29 [1938], as I bring this book to a close" .....)
It is a time when, as is all too clear:
If I had opened a newspaper. I would have seen so much ink devoted to the imminence of war. The threat of war, the threat to destroy all these café terraces, this Petřín Hill, these castle towers. The threat to destroy this city through which I walk.Nezval's account ends before the German occupation of the Sudetenland, but does cover the scare of May 1938, when: "collective fate had been hanging by a thread" -- one that would not then hold much longer -- and the sense, if not of doom but of likely inevitable loss, colors the account melancholily.
He wanders these streets and takes it all in, embracing the role of flâneur:
Maybe this is why the role of the "flâneur" seems so ideal, because life is indeed fleeting. When we walk -- and especially when we walk with no destination in mind -- the faint images of our desire impose themselves on our steps and prevent us from seeing its end, its converse.Beyond mere rambling observation, there's also reminiscence -- places and objects stir up memories -- not least of time spent with André Breton, and Nezval's relationships with the Surrealist and Communist movements-- both of which were ... complicated. He writes nicely here how:
I do not consider myself, nor should I be considered, one of those apostates who sobered up by parting ways with the Surrealist Group.Nezval's wanderings take him all over Prague, the endnotes helpfully describing some of the places (and personalities) he mentions, as otherwise also it can be hard to picture some of the scenes -- so familiar to him, but presumably not the reader. (A few photographs that are included do help, too.) But certainly he conveys the sense that:
On the contrary, my love for the revelations of Surrealism, so poignantly dovetailing with my own dreams, a perfect correspondence with them, has persuaded me to write these lines.
The ineffable magic of this city I walk through is beyond dispute, a peculiar mix of acutely archaic charm and a modern sensibility.And so also his certainty that, come what may: "I am and will remain for all time a Prague flâneur"
His walking, and writing, also inspire Nezval to varieties of reflection -- at one point going so far as to literally guide the reader (though obliquely, not in the second person) as to what s/he might do -- down to the advice:
If a poet, he shouldn't let onerous or attenuated ambition affect him, and he should refrain from writing ! This spellbound man should refrain from writing, if he doesn't want what he has snared to evaporate through all his pores. Refrain from writing !Yet writing -- creative transformation -- is always at the heart of his endeavors, even as he focuses on simply walking aimlessly -- as is made clear also by his repeated mentions of writing this text. So too many of his reflections are on art and the creative process -- including the claim that:
The poet is someone who destroys and creates myths, who destroys them to create new ones, always more real.A particularly neat feature of this translation is that: "actually two different versions of the first edition existed, and apparently what generally had been considered the first edition was in fact a self-censored, revised version", and the version presented here is the (long "unknown and forgotten") 'ur-first-edition', with an Appendix of Alterations included that presents the material that was then published in the 'other' first edition. As translator Jed Slast notes, the main distinction between the two is that the revised one had: "the references to André Breton, Sigmund Freud, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Surrealism, and the proletariat and so on expunged" -- among the most interesting material in the original. It's also fascinating to see what Nezval substituted -- padding the text in places so as to keep the total page-count and basic layout of the book the same.
In either version -- but especially the first and original one -- A Prague Flâneur is a lovely document of its times and, especially, place, and an appealing personal account, Nezval a very good guide also to the feel of the place -- and parts of the artistic scene there (and beyond) as well. The inclusion of the variations on the text is also particularly welcome.
- M.A.Orthofer, 15 August 2024
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A Prague Flâneur:
- Twisted Spoon Press publicity page
- Labyrint publicity page
- The Absolute Gravedigger
- Sexual Nocturne, in Edition 69
- See Index of Eastern European literature
- See Index of Biographical works under review
- See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945
- Other books from Twisted Spoon Press under review
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Czech author Vítězslav Nezval lived 1900 to 1958.
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© 2024 the complete review
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